Schleswig-Holsteinisches Pionier-Bataillon Nr.9

Schleswig-Holsteinisches Pionier-Bataillon Nr.9 (PB Nr.9) is our sister unit, they participate, and live with us inside our trench sector. Pionier-Bataillon Nr.9 is a World War One Reenactment and Living History Group that also allows collectors and historical interpreters to come together and explore the "Art of Trench Warfare." We have become the newest Central Powers unit to join the ranks of the "Great War Association" which is commonly known as the GWA. The GWA strives to honor all the original participants of the First World War through battle reenactments and educational activities.

The GWA is an umbrella organization for several hundred WW1 historical interpreters that participate in one of the 20th Century's most horrible conflicts. We reenact the Great War twice a year at the Caesar Krauss Great War Memorial Site near Newville, PA., which has an authentically recreated a portion of the Western Front as it may have appeared, circa 1916-1918.

Our battlefield has opposing trench-lines, belts of barbed wire, trench debris, no-man's land complete with shell craters and behind the front-line trenches are bombproofs and bunkers where Offiziers and Soldaten spend their ordinary lives trying to make the best of the war.

At the Caesar Krauss Great War Memorial Site you can see German, British, Americans and French soldiers participating in what we call the "Reenactors Reenactment." For nothing is out of place.

Why do we portray Pioniers?

Why would anyone portray "Pioniers?" Let see you get to wear black shoulder boards and a Feldmütze trimmed in black. You get to do all sorts of engineer type construction (Build bunkers, pillboxes and other assorted projects). We get to strap big honking shovels, mattox and picks on our backs and look like a walking Knack box. .

Carrying our tools on our backs makes us feel strong and with that notion we are planning on re-wiring the entire German frontline to resemble the Hindenburg line. Just think not an Allied soldaten will get thru they will be hanging on our wire and dangle in the breeze.

Another great idea that we have is to dig an underground tunnel to the Allied Combat Commanders Headquarters so we can listen to his planning strategy. We figure if we start soon we can finish by year 2010.

Now why wouldn't you want to be a "Pionier?"